Aliens in Skirts Get Brushoff From Men at Work: Miriam Meckel

By Miriam Meckel -
Oct 17, 2010

This month, Germany celebrated its
20th anniversary of reunification. Like any birthday present, it
was received with joy when East and West merged in 1990.

But there was another amazing gift that the country has
declined to accept over the past two decades: the mindset of 16
million emancipated citizens from the East who never questioned
the idea that men and women can work regular full-time jobs
while sharing equal responsibility for child care and education.

One of those 16 million people has made it into the Federal
Chancellery. And it’s a woman. When Angela Merkel took office in
2005, this was lauded as a signal that Germany was finally
forging ahead as a country of equal opportunity for men and
women to leadership positions. Instead, it brushed off the
advantages of eastern German gender equality.

This is the picture today: While half of all business-
school students are women, a mere 27 percent of Germany’s
managers are female, and this number drops to 13 percent when it
comes to board membership at big enterprises. The European Union
average is 30 percent.

Only five women are on the group management boards of the
30 companies listed on Germany’s benchmark DAX Index. Deutsche
Telekom AG, E.ON AG, Merck KGaA, SAP AG and Siemens AG are the
only ones that have seen the benefit of female representation at
the highest level.

Torrent of Reproaches

This is stunning news in terms of gender equality,
particularly considering Germany has made little progress for
the last 20 years. The country has developed an even bigger
remuneration gap between men and women. It is true that this is
still a problem in many countries. But while women in the EU
earn an average of 18 percent less than men do in the same jobs,
Germany ratchets up the pay gap to almost 25 percent. It isn’t
surprising that the EU Commission regularly directs a torrent of
reproaches toward Germany.

EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding recently announced
that there would be a law-enforced quota for women in management
positions if things don’t improve by the end of 2011. This
instantaneously excited a wave of negative responses by male
managers and the conservative press. There seem to be few
worries Germany has slipped a notch to position No. 13 (behind
Lesotho and the Philippines) in the latest “Global Gender Gap
Report 2010” compiled by the World Economic Forum.

Performance Drivers

Why is Germany making so little progress in gender
equality? Senior managers ignore the body of research showing
that women act as corporate- and financial-performance drivers.
The country’s political leaders underestimate the foreseeable
gap of a staggering 24 million in the European workforce, which
Germany could help fill if the female participation rate rises.

There are a couple of reasons for the lack of progress.
First, Germany isn’t always the open-minded country it pretends
to be. The idea of a working mother being a “Rabenmutter”
(uncaring mother) -- a word lacking its equivalent in the rest
of Europe -- is still prevalent, even in well-educated circles.
Talking to senior management in Germany, one quickly realizes
that “secretary” is still the only professional position that
women in the company fill.

If women are to enjoy genuine support and be equal
contenders for careers in senior management, there is a dire
need for a major cultural change in Germany that includes new
models of equal parenting, modern concepts for state-supported
child day care and flexible working times. Without this change,
families led by parents with equal obligations and opportunities
won’t become a reality.

Jobs for Boys

Also, with too few women in top positions the routine of
male self-selection for such positions is perpetuated. As many
senior managers, including the few female ones, still live and
work in a male-dominated environment, they tend to rely on their
peers when promoting people.

If this self-sustaining process is to be disrupted, more
female managers are urgently needed. They would offer two
benefits: They would promote qualified women applying for the
same positions as their male counterparts. And men would slowly
get used to being surrounded not just by their own kind, but
also by competent women.

Finally, women need some of those role models that men
could always rely on. Female employees will refrain from aiming
for senior-management jobs as long as the path is seen as a
horror trip where you bang your head against glass ceilings, are
viewed as a bad mother and treated like an alien in a skirt.

In 2008, Norway enforced a female quota for corporate
boards, and the number of women board members has since
increased to 40 percent. At a recent discussion on Norway’s
policy as a possible role model for Europe, an entrepreneurial
woman from eastern Germany had to admit that gender equality
hadn’t become the modus operandi for a unified Germany.

Having rejected the big present of emancipation in 1990,
Germany might have to finally enforce it by law.

(Miriam Meckel is the managing director of the Institute
for Media and Communications Management at the University of St.
Gallen in Switzerland, and a faculty associate at the Berkman
Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. The
opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column:
Miriam Meckel at miriam.meckel@unisg.ch